FAR ^C/ESTS 



CALE rOUNG RICE 



FAR QUESTS 



FAR QUESTS 

BY 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

•I 

AUTHOR OF 

THE IMMORTAL LURE, A NIGHT IN AVIGNON, YOLANDA OF CYPRUS, 
CHARLES DI TOCCA, DAVID, MANY GODS, NIRVANA DAYS, ETc! 




Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

MCMXII 



T'b3S3S 
.L 3^2 f ■3, 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCHTOING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, igi2, BY CALE YOUNG RICE 



THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 



V 



.< 



£.C1.A309738 



To 
ANNE CRAWFORD FLEXNER 

whose unfailing appreciation and friendship 
are here gratefully acknov/ledged. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Mystic 3 

The Wife of Judas Iscariot 7 

Star of Achievement 11 

Cloister Lays 

1. Brother Gian 20 

2. Sister Paula 23 

Limitations 27 

Highland Joy 29 

To the Spirit of Nature 30 

The Pilgrims of Thibet 33 

HiERANTIS 37 

La Morgue Litteraire 41 

Philosophies 44 

Love by Traeth-y-Daran 46 

A Lydian Bacchanal 47 

iESCHYLUS 54 

COSMISM 56 

The Excommunicant 59 

Andre Revine 62 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Cry of the Disillusioned 65 

The Deserter of Nirvana. 67 

What More, O Sea 69 

Oriental Memories 

1. Rain in Ise 71 

2. A Chinese City 72 

3. A Burmese Idol 73 

4. In Ceylon 74 

5. North India 74 

6. The Khamsin, at Cairo 75 

7. The Jordan — and Jericho 75 

A Requiem for a Magdalen 77 

Snowdonian Hills 78 

Gulls at Land's End 81 

To Shelley 82 

The Apostate 85 

Spes Mystica 87 

Moods of the Moor 89 

Sea-Lure 91 

BiDDEFORD Bay 93 

The Fishing of 0-Sushi 95 

A Woman's Reply 97 

Waters Withheld 98 

Fog 99 

The Lost Bedouin loi 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Song of a Neophyte 102 

Sappho's Death Song 104 

The Master 106 

Civil War 108 

Messages no 

What Part 112 

The Unknown Shore 113 

Man 114 

Haunted Seas 115 

Com^cTS 116 

Who Rests Not 118 

The Unhonoured 119 

At Lincoln, England 120 

The Song of a Drunken Pirate 122 

Buoys 123 

To a Boasting Bluet 1 24 

Voices at the Veil 125 

To Sea! 127 

On Iroquois Hill 129 

SuFFiciNGS 13 1 

Recompense 132 

Vanishings 134 

Galileo 135 

At the End 139 



FAR QUESTS 



THE MYSTIC 

There is a quest that calls me, 

In nights when I am lone, 
The need to ride where the ways divide 

The Known from the Unknown. 
I mount what thought is near me 

And soon I reach the place, 
The tenuous rim where the Seen grown dim 

And the Sightless hides its face. 

I have ridden the wind, 
I have ridden the sea, 
I have ridden the moon and stars. 
I have set my feet in the stirrup seat 
Of a comet coursing Mars. 

3 



4 FAR QUESTS 

And everywJtere 

Thro the earth and air 

My thought speeds, lightning-shod , 

It comes to a place where checking pace 

It cries y ^^ Beyond lies Godr' 

It calls me out of the darkness, 

It calls me out of sleep, 
*'Ride! ride! for you must, to the end of Dust!'' 

It bids — and on I sweep 
To the wide outposts of Being, 

Where there is Gulf alone — 
And thro a Vast that was never passed 

I listen for Life's tone. 

/ have ridden the wind, 

I have ridden the night, 

I have ridden the ghosts that flee 

From the vaults oj death like a chilling breath 

Over eternity. 



FAR QUESTS 
And everywhere 
Is the world laid bare — 
Ether and star and clod — 
Until I wind to its brink and find 
But the cry, ''Beyond lies God!'' 

It calls me and ever calls me! 

And vainly I reply, 
"Fools only ride where the ways divide 

What Is from the Whence and Why!" 
I'm lifted into the saddle 

Of thoughts too strong to tame 
And down the deeps and over the steeps 

I find . . . ever the Same. 

/ have ridden the wind, 

I have ridden the stars, 

I have ridden the force that flies 

With far intent thro the firmament 

And each to each allies. 



6 FAR QUESTS 

And everywhere 

That a thought may dare 

To gallop, mine has trod — 

Only to stand at last on the strand 

Where just beyond lies God. 



THE WIFE OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 

The wife of Judas Iscariot 

Went out into the night, 
She thought she heard a voice crying: 

Was it to left or right? 

She went forth to the Joppa Gate, 

Three crosses hung on high, 
The one was a thief's, the other a thief's, 

The third she went not nigh. 

For still she heard the voice crying: 

Was it to right or left? 
Or was it but a wind of fear 

That blew her on bereft? 
7 



FAR QUESTS 

She went down from the Joppa Gate 

Into the black ravine. 
She climbed up by the rocky path 

To where a tree was seen. 

And "What, sooth, do I follow here? 

Is it my own mad mind? 
Judas! Judas Iscariot!" 

She called upon the wind. 

"Judas! Judas Iscariot!" 

She crept beneath the tree. 
What thing was it that swung there, 

Hung so dolorously? 

* Judas! Judas Iscariot!'' 

She touched it with her hand. 
The leaves shivered above her head, 
To make her understand. 



FAR QUESTS 
''Judas! Judas! my love! my lord!" 

Her hands went o'er it fast, 
From foot to thigh, from thigh to throat, 

And stopped — there — at last. 

''Judas! Judas! what has He done, 

The Christ you followed so!" 
More than the silver left on him 

Made answer to her woe. 



"Judasl Judas! what has He done! 

O has it come to this! 
The Kingdom promised has but proved 

For you a soul-abyss! 

"Was He the Christ and let it be?" 

She cut him from the limb. 
And held him in her arms there 

And wept over him, 



lo FAR QUESTS 

"None in the world shall ever know 
Your doubts of Him but I! 

* Traitor! traitor! and only traitor!' 
Will ever be their cry! 

"None in the world shall ever know - 
But I who am your wife!" 

She flung the silver from his purse: 
It made a bitter strife. 



It rattled on the ringing rocks 

And fell to the ravine. 
"Was He the Christ and let it be?" 

She moaned, still, between. 

She held him in her arms there, 
And kissed his lips aright, 

The lips of Judas Iscariot, 

Who hanged himself that night. 



STAR OF ACHIEVEMENT 



Star of Achievement! 

Star that arose when man first rose on the earth 

And felt within him the Upward Urge of Being; 

Star of the ultimate heaven, 

Greater than that of Vega — the heaven of the soul; 

Wondrous is thy ascension, 

Wondrous thy lifting up of him, thy chosen — 

Of man, above all creatures! 



II 



The earth was green wnen he came, 

The earth with its myriad-teeming mountains and 

valleys, 

II 



12 FAR QUESTS 

The earth with its veiling shading clouds and breezes, 
The earth that brought to birth all seas and 
continents. 

The elder slime had conceived, preparing his way. 
Its womb impregnate with the command of the 

Infinite 
Strove to give birth to a form 
In whose high-spacious spirit thou shouldst appear. 
But the travails of it were vain. 

For not in the winged thing, nor the saurian, 
Nor leviathan lashing the sea, 
Nor the mastodon shaking the land, 
O Star, thy light awoke — 
But mystically in man! 



m 



And dim was thy beam, dim, primevally! 
By it man hoped no more at first than to seize 



FAR QUESTS 13 

And hold a rude cave in the forest, 

To shape with a stone a stone for his protection, 

To clothe him with a wild skin and watch with 

wonder 
The magic of river and tree and melting mist, 
Of springing storms that died in dens of thunder, 
Of dreaded lightning tongues that spat destruction. 
Dim was thy light, a will-o'-the-wisp that flitted 
On dreams and vague desires. 

Yet in his need he sought to see thee clearer. 

Savage he was, but, in the sky of his soul, 

Wast thou, a whisperer of aspirations, 

From age to age leading him, 

With a little gain upward: 

From the cave to the hut, his first home upon earth. 

From enmity with all beasts to toil with some. 

Savage he was, yet in his vast soul-dark 

He was not all forsaken. 

Not left alone in the wilderness of Nature 



14 FAR QUESTS 

With naught of hope to lead his look above it, 
With naught to bid him master it. 
For Star, O Star, it was thy light he found 
In all, as in the hard flint imprisoned fire, 
His fervid friend thro all the cycles since. 



IV 



For time sped on — 

Unmeasured but by thee, beauteous Star, 

But by thy inspiration to his soul. 

Thy seeds of light quickened in him to knowledge. 

And knowledge grew to dream and dream to power. 

Speech did he learn from thy bright whisperings, 

And with it moulded winds 

And the rhythm of wild waters into Song, 

That grew too precious to trust utterly 

To lips that perished. 

So thou, O Star, put in his hand the stylus, 

And lo, ravisht, he wrote! 



FAR QUESTS 15 



But death was ever with him! 

O . . . ! death! . . . 

A little while he counted suns and moons, 

A little while he slipped amid the seasons, 

A Httle while he gazed upon thy glow — ■ 

And then was gone! 

Whither, Star? 

Thy answer was, Into the invisible, 
Into the land of spirits. 

And not since thy first beam, O Soul-uplifter, 
Had any fallen on him like to this. 
For from it was born worship, from it the gods. 
In the Unseen they rose, 

In the place where flesh is not, nor dust that dieth. 
But only the powers that make all things to be. 
Only the might that heaved the breasts of the 
mountains — 



i6 FAR QUESTS 

To the lips of the clouds heaved them; 

Only the breath that breathed the continents, 

Out of the sea breathed them; 

Only the pulse that turns the tide forever. 

Yea, yea, the gods were bom! 

And temples towering, O Star, and cities. 

That sprung out of man's vision at thy voice. 

A word of light from thee touching the desert 
Brought the rose, Babylon, to sudden bloom. 
Or Memphian fanes that floated in the Nile. 
Nor could war, famine, and sin, and pestilence. 
And cataclysmic fate's miasma quench thee. 
Thro them thou wast, Shiner on the spirit! 
Thro them thou wast — 
Drawing men's eyes toward thee 
As the needle is drawn to the changeless Light of 

the North. 
By thee he sailed the centuries. 
Forgetful oft and breaking oft upon shoals, 



FAR QUESTS 17 

On granite laws and tyrannies, 

On many a reef of folly, 

On many a seeming harbour set with ruin — 

But making many a haven safe at last! 



VI 



Yea, as the nations know! 

The nations who send up their praise to thee, 

Hymning a hundred chartings he has made! 

India cries, "To Meditation's Port, 

O Star, he came by thee and found the Infinite." 

And Egypt older yet upon the seas, 

**I launched him first on the known tide of time."' 

Greece chants, "I gave him beauty for the world! " 

And the Christ-land, "To Beauty I brought Love!" 

While Rome whose voyage led from Port to Port 

Gathered all praise of thee, 

And echoed it from Albion to the Elbe, 

And southward by Hispania to the Straits, 

Thro which at length it leapt the loth Atlantic, 



i8 FAR QUESTS 

The Vast, the Unsailed, 

Like luring music, 

Before the bows of mightiest mariners, 

And lo, and lo, the rounded earth was one I 



VII 



And men, O fair Effulgence, 

Men too were one! 

Bound consciously at last by the deep rays, 

By thy divine deep rays of brotherhood! 

With hands locked fast around their little planet 

Which they had learned was not alone God's care 

Locked fast by fear and awe, 

Or by the gentler bonds of hope and pity, 

They saw, thro thy revealings. 

That earth fares in an infinitesimal round 

Mid infinite sun-spaces. 

And that upon their littleness and briefness 

And universal fate hangs fraternity. 



FAR QUESTS 19 

So close they throng together, closer, Star, 

With every shedding of thy radiance 

Thro new soul-firmaments of vaster range. 

For tho they are finite sparks 

For ever and ever blown, toward infinite Dark, 

By the breath of Life — 

And lonely save for hope of a Rekindling, 

Or for each other's light along the way, 

They trust in thee, O Star, Star of Achievement, 

Trust thy ascension — 

Shining sure ascension, 

Thro nebulous realms that seem unknowable — 

Toward constellated Love and Truth and Freedom! 

Toward zenithed Joy! 

Toward life's Intent, in the central heaven of all! 



CLOISTER LAYS 

I 

BROTHER GIAN 

(0/ the Benedictines at Monte Cassino) 
Circa 1080 

Dear Jesus Christ, I'm Brother Gian. 

Within my cell I sit and scratch 
From pagan parchments words writ on 

Such vellum as not kings can match. 
Words, Greek and Latin — all profane. 

Three Homers I have quite erased 

And look to see their lies replaced 

By lives of Saints without a stain. 

20 



FAR QUESTS ai 

This Virgil now: I'll do it next. 

Last night it tempted me to peep 
A moment at its wicked text, 

Telling of nymphs ... I could not sleep. 
Dear Jesus Christ, I dreamt I was 

A faun within a Bacchic rout, 

And one white creature chose me out: 
I broke with kisses all Thy laws. 

Here is the place ... I danced as wild 

As any bacchant of them all. 
With ivy-woven tresses whiled 

Mad hours that maddened at her call. 
She led me far into the wood 

Where not a Pan or Satyr leapt. 

Dear Jesus Christ, 'twas Satan swept 
Me on — I scarcely understood. 

Here is the place. . . . For in my dream 
Each letter trembled and became 



22 FAR QUESTS 

A nymph: the parchment was a stream 
Of shapes that glimmered without shame. 

I danced and followed where she fled 
With lips wine-glad bent back to shout. 
Dear Jesus Christ, beyond a doubt 

She rose where ''Venus" here I read. 

So first of all I raze its shame! 

And pray that in its place may stand 
Some letter of the Virgin's name 

Writ by a pure and holy hand, 
And set about with red and gold 

And lilies — where my eyes still see 

But glimmering limbs that tempt and flee, 
But shimmering arms that would enfold. 

Dear Jesus Christ, this I confess, 

And fasting will I toil until 
The vellum, white as holiness. 

Shall be fit for an angel's quill! 



FAR QUESTS 23 

An angel like the nymph with eyes 

And body that . . . Dear Jesus Christ, 

To woman was man sacrificed! 
From Eve his sins forever rise! 

II 

SISTER PAULA 

{Of the Benedictine Nuns) 

I will not shun to touch the poor, 

Tho loathsome be their bruises. 
Nor fail to toil, O Virgin Pure, 

On garments for their uses. 
The sacramental bell I'll tend 

Unceasing, soon or late, 
But O, upon thy image there, 
That clasps the Babe unto it, fair, 

I pray, bid me not wait! 

The holy water I will fetch 

From Rome, afaint and fasting; 



24 FAR QUESTS 

On the cold chapel-stones I'll stretch 
Long nights without repasting. 

Sackcloth I'll bind about my waist, 
Nor ever will I rest, 

But, Virgin Mother, let it be 

That I need not look up and see 
The child there on thy breast! 

For seeing it I can but sin, 

I, ne'er to be a mother. 
And think of love that might have been, 

And of one, now Christ's brother, 
Who tosses in his convent cell 

On billows of desire, 
While toiling hours strike on his dreams 
Stern blows of penitence that seems 

To shatter them with fire! 

I can but sin — and cast away 
All love that is not human, 



FAR QUESTS 25 

That has not mystic joy to sway 

True-mated man and woman! 
That does not spring and fill the world 

With children and with song; 
With passion, in the summer night, 
Upon young lips bHss hallows quite, 

Heart-bliss that is so strong! 

I can but sin — the while this veil 

I wear seems but to strangle; 
The while all vows I follow fail, 

Vows made but to entangle! 
The while laud, vesper and compline 

Sound to my childlessness 
Like chants the hapless heathen pour 
On altars of false gods — no more! 

Such is my wickedness! 

Therefore, O Virgin, set my hands 
To tasks however lowly, 



26 FAR QUESTS 

To penance only cloister-bands 

Of Magdalens pay slowly! 
Let me be less within thy sight 

Than Heaven's lowest heir, 
But place me not where I must brood 
On the lost bliss of motherhood — 

Before thy image there! 



LIMITATIONS 

(Art and the Man) 

I am savage for life and the lusts 
Of beckoning quests I have banished, 
I am glutted with Beauty's face 

And the brush that I paint her with, 
I am sick of the dreams and dusts 
Of the soul of me — of the vanished 
Years that I spent in chase 
Of the luring lips of Myth. 

I was suckled for more than to fling 
The blood of my heart on a palette. 
I was given the eye of a god 

For more than a picture's worth. 
27 



28 FAR QUESTS 

I have felt the ineffable sting 
Of Life — tho I be Art's valet. 
I have painted the cloud — or the clod, 
Who should have possessed the earth. 

The Caesar in me, and the Christ 
Cry out to be given power. 
The Antony in my veins 
Would waste a world's throne for his queen. 
And what to Ulysses sufficed — 
The infinite far foam-flower! — 
That only would quench the quest 
Of my soul for worlds unseen. 

The law of it, God, do I hate, 
That a man with the might of many 
Must hold to the task of one — 
In the groove of an ancient awe; 
Or find, if his will, o'er great. 
Denies to be bound by any, 
The body of him shall break, undone, 
And Fate appear in the flaw. 



HIGHLAND JOY 

(Wales) 

The blue-bells ring in the bracken, 
The heather bells on the hili, 

The gorse is yellow 

The sunlight mellow 
With music of wind and rill! 

Afar the mountains are rising 
High Snowdon and all his knights, 
For some fair tourney 
With clouds that journey 
Up from the sea's blue bights! 

O winds, O waters, O mountains, 
O earth with your singing sod, 

I'm glad of the weather 

That brings together 

My heart and the heart of God I 
29 



TO THE SPIRIT OF NATURE 

A myriad years you have led us 

In adoration on 
To worship of wind and water, 

Wood, star and winged down. 
A myriad years you have held us 

In an ecstasy of trust, 
But never a thing have told us 

Of the meaning of life's lust. 

Your suns and your moons and seasons 

We "have hallowed with our praise. 
With a passion like a lover's 

We have clasped your nights and days. 
In solitudes we have trysted 

And in silence, yearning long. 
And singing, in sooth, it taught us, 

But not the meaning of song. 
30 



FAR QUESTS 31 

Your flowers we know and name them 

With breaths of beauty o'er, 
Your leaves and their million lispings 

We have treasured more and more. 
Your clouds we have followed farther 

Than fancy follows thought, 
And many a gleam have gathered, 

But not the gleam we sought. 

The sea and its soul of power 

Has had of our hearts full awe 
And love; tho we know what tribute 

Has fed its mystic maw. 
Brave litanies we have lipped it, 

Brave prayers have we paid, 
But infinite is its answer — 

And of that we are afraid! 

And yet with joy for the jungle, 

With wonder for the wild. 
Your lure and delight have led us 

As the rainbow leads the child. 



32 FAR QUESTS 

Your deserts burning and dewless 
Have given our spirits drink, 

But whence it has come we know not, 
From what Elysian brink. 

Nor why, on heights of the mountain, 

In chasms of earth's crust, 
We feel forever the Presence 

That is not framed of dust; 
That is not born of the atoms, 

Nor by the ether bound; 
That seeks forever to find us, 

Yet never can be found. 

So come but a little nearer — 

Or farther breathe away. 
Be more to us than a Presence 

That says nor yea nor nay. 
Between the seen and the shadowed 

Stand not so strangely dumb, 
Yet if you must, still let us trust 

The Word at last shall come. 



THE PILGRIMS OF TfflBET 

Down the road to Llasa, 
Himalayan and strange, 
I thought I saw them winding 

From range to lower range, 
The seekers after Buddha, 
Across the ice and cold, 
And from their lips the mystic phrase 
Of merit ever tolled: 

' Om mane padme, hum!' 
Life is but a way of lust. 
Turn the wheel and beat the drum, 
Till we to Nirvana come. 

Clothed in rags and turquoise 

And necklaces of skulls, 
And shoes of yak worn furless, 

And fleece the shepherd culls, 
33 



34 FAR QUESTS 

With faces like to parchments 

Whereon alone was writ 
The repetition of those words 
Of wonder infinite: 

*0m mane padme, hum!* 
Life is but a robe of lust. 
Turn the wheel and beat the drum, 
Till we to Nirvana come. 

Down the road ascetic 

And desert, bleak and drear, 
I thought I saw them winding 
To Llasa walls more near; 
Strong man and maid and mother, 

Shorn youth and sexless age. 
That ever to the wind intoned 
Their one acquitting page: 

*0m mane padme, hum!' 
Grief is but the goal of lust. 
Turn the wheel and beat the drum, 
Till we to Nirvana come. 



FAR QUESTS 35 

Past the hermit's cavern — 

Where he alone drew breath! — 
Past nunneries where silence 

Waits, acolyte of death; 
Past shrines of lesser power, 

Where smiling idols wear 
The bliss upon their gilded lips 
Of the all-granting prayer. 

*0m mane padme, hum!' 
Leave the life of flesh and lust. 
Turn the wheel and beat the drum, 
Till we to Nirvana come. 

Down the road — and down it, 
I saw them, lama-led. 

Mid holy lakes and mountains, 

And monasteries fed 

With endless alms — and measured 

By slow prostrations round. 
And by the chanted syllables 

That sprung as from the ground. 



36 FAR QUESTS 

*0m mane padme, hum!* 
Life is but the lair of lust. 
Turn the wheel and beat the drum, 
Till we to Nirvana come. 

Then at last to Llasa 

They reach — I see them yet! — 
And touch the gods on altars 

Above all others set. 
Monk, man and maid and mother, 

Upon the Wheel of Things, 
From which escape shall come alone 
To him who ceaseless sings: 

'Om mane padme, hum!' 
End the hfe of greed and lust. 
Turn the wheel and beat the drum. 
Till we to Nirvana come. 



HIERANTIS 

{The First to see the One God) 
B. C— 

I went out and lay down on the earth. 

Dawn was not, but the sea and the sky 
Held an auspice, as dimly my soul 

Held a vision I strained to descry. 
Held a vision that hung below birth 

In my brain, as the sun in his stole 
Of imagined and infinite light 
Was yet hung in the deeps of the night. 

I went out and lay down on the breast 
Of the mountain; I clasped it and cried, 

"Let me see what is from me withheld! 
For the gods I am fain to deride! 
37 



38 FAR QUESTS 

All the temples and groves that are drest 

In the dream of the Spring have enspelled 
Me to reverence, but to no trust: 
Is all lifting of prayers but a lust?" 

For I knew that men worshipped the sun 
And the moon and the might of the stars; 

That on earth were peoples who made 
Of all things, quick or dead, avatars; 

Of the tree, of the rivers that run 

From a source beyond sight; seeking aid 

Of the wind, or beseeching the seas 

That no sacrifice e'er can appease. 

O I knew, and was so at despair 

Of all altars, all incense and praise! 

"There is fortune," I said, ''there is fate, 
But they fall in a myriad ways. 

To no god of one way will I bare 
And abase me — his rending await: 



FAR QUESTS 39 

Little gods are no gods; give me one 

In whose hands are all things that are done!" 

Then I saw! on the soul of me burst 
Light unbreathable, for I beheld 

How a thought, that to man was before 
Never sent, could all Mystery weld! 

"There is One, there is One God! the First 
And the Last," did I triumph, "No more! 

And his throne is the Atom, the Star, 

Is all tilings that have been and that are! 

" He is god of the East and the West, 
He is God of the Night and the Known, 

He is Sun, he is Storm, he is Shade, 
He is Strife, he is Dust that is strewn! 

He is Star, he is Foam on the Crest 
Of the Wave, he is Wind that is stayed; 

He is what shall live Ever, or Die, 

He is Pity and Hope — he is I!" 



40 FAR QUESTS 

Like delirium thro me it ran, 

Like divinity, for in a flash 
Was the universe mine, I had torn 

The last veil — O immortally rash ! 
It was mine! all the vast Caravan 

Of its Being from bourne unto bourne: 
For the vision that swept me, a clod, 
Was His vision, was He — the One God! 

I arose: the sun stood like a priest 
In ineffable gladness of gold 

To embrace me, a proselyte, who 

Had heard all that to heart can be told. 

I outreached him my arms, I the least 
Yet the greatest that dawn ever knew. 

Then went down, with what rapturous ken. 

To tell all to the children of men. 



LA MORGUE LITTERAIRE 

A house for all dead books 
Beside Oblivion's River 
I saw the lone ghosts build 
With hands Plutonian. 
Its walls were wan and cliilled, 
And only Time's faint shiver 
Ran thro it, not the blessed breath of Pan. 

They built it at the foot 
Of hoary Charon's ferry. 
Its gate upon the tide 
Stood like a mouth of fate. 
And often to its side, 
Mid souls death could not bury, 
He brought within his boat the futile freight. 

41 



42 FAR QUESTS 

Grave History; or Song 
That had no mighty pinions, 
So dropped again to earth, 
And under earth, to him. 
Tales that no Muse gave birt 
Within her fair dominions 
He wafted o'er and ranged within it dim. 

And soon unto its gate 
From out the fines Lethean 
Came many a phantom form 
On foot that hung with dread — 
Came lips that once were warm 
And eyes despair made peon 
When they beheld amid dead tomes their dead. 

And some their hands would wring — 
A usage of old sorrow 
They had forgotten long 
In that Tartarean vale. 



FAR QUESTS 43 

And some amid the throng 
In vain would strive to borrow 
From memory a might to voice their wail. 

But many merely gazed 
And went away forgetting 
To watch with listless tread 
Old Charon flit and fare. 
For these found not their dead 
And knew that life was letting 
Them still a little bide — but did not care. 

A house for all dead books 
Beside Oblivion's River, 
Built by the barren shades: 
Alas who shall not find, 
Brought to him by the raids 
Of Time, all breath's outliver. 
What he had held immortal for men's mind. 



PHILOSOPHIES 

Dead old Earth, still wrapt in russet, 

Not a sprig of Spring? 
Not a bird yet to discuss it, 

From the South a-wing? 
What if buds should never burgeon 

On your breast again? 
Would it mean God, like a surgeon, 

Cuts you from his ken? 

Cuts you from his cosmic Being, 

Sets you free of life? 
Free of His deep overseeing, 

Of His upward strife? 
Are there in the great space yonder 

Millions so set free? 
Dead worlds that o'er dead ways wander. 

With no destiny? 

44 



FAR QUESTS 45 

Fie on fancies so unfruitful I 

Hear that robin fling 
Laughter at me with his fluteful 

Messages of Spring. 
Laughter which is Earth's and Heaven's 

Best philosophy! 
Which, divinely ever, leavens 

Life with sanity I 



LOVE BY TRAETH-Y-DARAN 

(Wales) 

At Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows, 
So take thy creel, O Madlen mine, 
We'll gather it full ere the moon's a-shine 
And bear it home from the dripping brine. 

At Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows: 
We'll cook it over the red culm-fire. 
And I will tell thee my heart's desire, 
And thou shalt tell me thine. 

At Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows. 
Thy creel, my lass! to the cliff we'll hie 
And seek in the clefts where the gulls go by 
Like dreams of love in a blue, blue eye. 

At Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows — 

And there each wind that above it blows 

Shall teach me to keep in thy cheek the rose 

Till the last sun o'er me die. 
a6 



A LYDIAN BACCHANAL 

The stag was gone 
And the hounds that follow; 
The glade was still, 
Not a stir around. 
Not a doe or fawn 
That had failed to follow, 
With keenest fear 
Could have sensed a sound. 
And yet on the hill 
There was something hid; 
In the coppice near 
Was a presence felt, 
Of eyes and feet 
47 



48 FAR QUESTS 

That were full of thrill, 
Of limbs a-quiver 
To leap and bound. 

Then sudden the leaves 
Of a laurel stirred, 
The branches parted 
And eyes peered out, 
With bacchic stealth 
Of glance that started, 
Then vanisht as if 
Pan-hoofs were heard. 
But not a hoof 
From the bushes broke; 
Not a wild-hearted 
Pipe poured health 
And happy lust 
Thro the deep vine- woof. 
Hung from the trees 
By the dryad folk. 



FAR QUESTS 49 

None: till, again, 
The eyes! between 
Leafy fillets 
Of parted green. 
And then, with lips 
Of fear unpursed. 
Out with a cry 
The bacchante burst! 
Out with a cry 
To the hills about: 
Out with a cry 
To the bacchant hid! 
Out with her cry 
For the reel and rout — 
The amorous pipe 
And the thyrsus-thrid! 

And swiftly he came, 
On foot as light 
As ever the vine-god 
Wove in dance! 



so FAR QUESTS 

Swiftly lie came 
With eyes as bright 
As ever the wine-god 
Taught to glance! 
Swiftly he came 
With fawn-skin tossed 
Over his shoulder, 
Ivy-crowned! 
Myrtle and thyme 
And reed he crossed, 
Seized her and whirled her 
Glorying round! 

O the dance! 
Thro the heart of Spring! 
Bacchus! Bacchus! 
God of the grape! — 
The reeling trance 
And the rapture-fling 
Of naked limbs — 
The ravishing! 



FAR QUESTS 51 

O the dance! 
In the deeps of May! 
Bacchus, behold 
What here is loosed! 
What mystery, 
What passion- sway, 
What deity 
By thee induced! 

But hist! the call 
Of their comrade-band! 
They pause, panting, 
And parted listen. 
The flame of love 
In their hearts is fanned 
To mad desire. 
Their eyes glisten. 
They whisper a tryst 
In the deeper wood 
At night — night — 
When the stars cover! 



52 FAR QUESTS 

For what is good — 
What is divine — 
But the clasp of lover 
Unto lover! 

A tryst: then lo, 

Lo, they have kissed. 

Then she is gone, 

And he, fleetly. 

Behind is left 

In the limpid glade 

A stir of bliss 

That has been completely. 

The silence sings 

Of the dance but hushed; 

The trodden thyme 

And the crocus, bleeding, 

Seem not to care, 

But, torn and crushed. 

Remember only 

The wild pipe's pleading! 



FAR QUESTS 53 

Bacchus! Bacchus! 
This was your way! 
Close to the seasons, 
Close to the sod! 
Close to the welling 
Of all reasons 
For our delight, O god I 



AESCHYLUS 

Ha! and did you, people of Greece, 
Praise the warrior, not the poet? 
"Bravely at Marathon he fought" — 
That alone on his tomb ye wrought? 
Courage? why it is common stuff, 
Fire of the flesh — a million know it I 
And did he 
With the eye to see 
Prometheus master destiny — 
Did he count it enough? 

Raze the tablet and write again, 
You by the Styx, who one time heard 
Orestes rave with immortal word. 
And (Edipus rock your hearts with pain. 
54 



FAR QUESTS 55 

Write: The fire of his flesh burnt true, 

But out of Olympian skies he drew 

A flame to kindle 

The mighty fame 

Of Greece wherever a tongue shall name 

High Tragedy — that first he came 

Immortally to wool 



COSMISM 

The sea asleep like a dreamer sighs; 

The salt rock-pools lie still in the sun, 
Except for the sidling crab that creeps 

Thro the moveless mosses green and dun. 
The small gray snail clings everywhere, 

For the tide is out; and the sea- weed dries 
Its tangled tresses in the warm air, 

That seems to ooze from the far blue skies, 

Where not a white gull on white wing flies. 

The mollusc gleams like a gem amid 

The scurf and the clustered green sea-grapes, 
Whose trellis is but the rock's bare side. 

Whose husbandman but the tide that drapes. 

56 



FAR QUESTS 57 

The little sandpiper tilts and picks 

His food, on the wet sea-marges hid, 
Till sudden a wave comes in and flicks 

Him off, then flashes away to bid 

Another frighten him — as it did. 

sweet is the world of living things, 

And sweet are the mingled sea and shore! 
It seems as if I never again 

Shall find life ill — as oft before. 
As if my days should come as the clouds 

Come yonder — and vanish without wings; 
As if all sorrow that ever shrouds 

]My soul and darkly about it clings 

Had lost forever its ravenings. 

As if I knew with a deeper sense 

That good alone is ultimate; 
That never an evil wrought of God 

Or man came truly out of hate. 



58 FAR QUESTS 

That Better springs from the heart of Worse, 
As calm from the heaving elements; 

That all things born to the Universe 
May suffer and perish utterly hence, 
But never refute its Innocence. 



THE EXCOMMUNICANT 

{In the time of Pope Sixtus V) 

Praise be, praise be, to printers all! 

Old Sixtus on his throne 
Would damn my soul to Hell with a Bull 

And now he has damned his own I 

''I'll have the Vulgate set," said he, 

*'In type beyond reproof; 
Without a wicked error — made 

Tho it be by the Devil's hoof! 

'It shall surpass in dot and jot 

All ink has ever etched, 
For every holy sheet of it 

Shall 'fore my eye be fetched. 
59 



6o FAR QUESTS 

"And, in a preface black and clear, 

I'll excommunicate 
All who shall dare to change the text 

But a tittle, by God's hate!" 



So straight he put his toads to it, 
His Gregoty, Pius, Paul, 

And not with a pint of Asti let 
Them wet their wits withal! 



Each new white sheet he conned himself 

With care "infallible," 
Then bound them up — to find them foul 

With errors, frowsy full! 

And all the world of heretics 
Is tittering now — from Thun 

To Tiber, from the Thames to where 
The Turk swears by Haroun! 



FAR QUESTS 6i 

''Papal Infallibility has damned 

The Pope himself, " they gloat, 
"For he must paste the errors o'er 

And be his own scapegoat!" 

Old Sixtus Fifth, who from his throne 

Would damn my soul to Hell, 
Shall lick the Devil's presses there 

And print blasphemies well! 



ANDRE REVINE 

"So let it be," 

You say, and cease. 
And sit there with seraphic mien, 

Knowing the rage 

You rouse in me 
Is fraught with fate, Andr6 Ravine I 

Yet as the gulf 

Between us grows, 

Perfection lives upon your lips. 

While mine are flames 

That burn and tear 

The ties that wedded us to strips. 
62 



FAR QUESTS 63 

And, did we part, 

The world would say, 
*'We know which of the twain was true 

To tortured Love. " 

The world would say, 
Andre Revine, that it was you. 

For am I not 

Unhappy bom, 
A magnet to all floating fates? 

And is it not 

Unhappiness 
The world ever suspects and hates? 

And are not you 

A thing so bright 
That shadow cannot o'er you fall? 

A thing so glad 

That guilt, if flung, 
Would but upon me fix its pall? 



64 FAR QUESTS 

You answer not, 

Andre Revine, 
But all-enduring sit and sigh. 

And yet I see 

That triumph springs 
In you at my defeated cry. 

*'So let it be," 

Then say I too; 
But this I hold the better part: 

To let flame break 

From anguished lips. 
Than kindle it in any heart I 



THE CRY OF THE DISILLUSIONED 

Come back to our hearts, fairies, fairies, 
Wild Uttle folk 
Of youth and delight! 

For time that has driven you from us carries 
After you ever 
Our aching sight. 

Come back and dance in the Place of our Dreams, 
Empty it lies of your glimmering feet; 
Come back, for Hope at its portal tarries, 
Tuning her harp to their beat. 
Come back and tell us immortally 
The way of the wind 
And the way of waters. 
The way of the gull on the shining sea, 
And of the sky's cloud-daughters. 

6s 



66 FAR QUESTS 

Come back and toil shall again be sweet — 

And faith shall follow, 

The fairer, after! 

toss to heaven enchantedly 

Your song and your singing laughter. 

Come back, O come, and the years shall flow 

Again — and quicken our hearts to see 

Beauty and love, as once, a-glow 

Under Spring's witchery! 



THE DESERTER OF NIRVANA 

I went into Pagoda-land, 

Far far it is away, 

And built me a low hut along the shore. 

The opiate sea came up the sand 

And murmured at my door 

And a wind-bell tinkled on my shrine all day. 

Between three palms I built the hut. 
Three bent above the shrine: 
Gautama in it sat imparting all. 
I drank the milk of the cocoanut 
The wonted wind let fall, 

And watched the lotos-moon bloom o'er the brine. 

67 



68 FAR QUESTS 

And there I lived, and looked to die — 
And there to live again, 
And write upon a palm-leaf all day long 
The sutras that should teach me why- 
Desire of life is wrong 
Within a world born of Illusion's pain. 

Aye there I lived, and looked to die — 

And there to live again, 

Beside the sea, the shrine, the bending palms 

That never cease in me to sigh, 

Now, of eternal calms 

That I forsook and nevermore shall gain. 



WHAT MORE, SEA 

What more, sea, what more from your mad lips 

Of mystic and immitigable foam, 
That hiss and writhe the hungrier, tho brave ships 

Last night were swallowed in eternal gloam? 
What more now w^ould you. Atheist, whom the wind 

Wakens to wild anathemas that rise 

To the universal temple of the skies 
And in the very ears of God are dinned? 

Have you a blasphemy more bitter still, 

A curse to hurl yet o'er infinity, 
A scorn of men who frame with feeble will 

A phantom which they name Divinity? 
And with it would you shake apart the stars 

That light His presence with encircling flame? 

69 



70 FAR QUESTS 

O sea, would you wash out His very Name 
From space's sempiternal calendars? 

Enough! your surging infidelity 

And stormy mockery reach but as high 
As do the thoughts of men who strain to see 

Into time's unimaginable Why. 
Earth's but a cockle bearing you across 

A Wider Sea, which is God or is not. 

Know then, your little lips can ne'er allot 
Disproof of Him, if needs must come that loss. 



ORIENTAL MEMORIES 



RAIN m ISE 

{Japan) 

The rain is falling upon the fields 

Of green-tipt rice that grows in Is^. 
Under the thatch in a cloak of straw 

The clouted peasant sits. 
The sea is hidden by mist, that yields 

And parts and closes again, in fleecy 
Saddening silence, like a dream 

That over sorrow flits. 

The rain is falling upon the fields 
Of flooded rice: the rain is falling. 
71 



72 FAR QUESTS 

Crossing the dimness like a wraith 

A lonely 'rickshaw creeps. 
The rain is falling and strangely wields 

A power to hush the sea that's calling — 
Hush the sea and the peasant's heart, 

Till sorrowless he sleeps. 

n 

A CHINESE CITY 

(At Nigkt) 

Thro the great wall, and down into the street. 
Where light and darkness narrowly contend, 
And teeming yellow faces start or blend 

In opiate strangeness, sinister or sweet. 

A joss-house suddenly, and incense vain 
Against the stench of the strong god of dirt, 
Whose priest is pestilence that waits inert 

Till for a million victims death is fain. 



FAR QUESTS 73 

ni 

A BURMESE IDOL 

The Shwe Dagon, with all its shrines 
Of twilight-saddened gold and glass. 

Among the thousand idols one 
I gaze upon but cannot pass. 

It sits within a dark retreat — 

Sits stony white, with painted brows 

And eyes and smiling lips and hands 
Laid as Nirvana's law allows. 

And faded flowers by it lie, 

Between the flickering candle-flames, 

That, like to moving lips without. 
Seem murmuring Siddhartha's names. 

I gaze and lo a hemisphere 

Of space and thought slips from me, till . . . 
The book I dream o'er falls; I wake — 

The West within and round me still. 



74 FAR QUESTS 

IV 
IN CEYLON 

Tall palms against the tropic sky, 
The Indian Ocean's karma-beat; 

A far faint ship that passes by, 

And Time sick-hearted with the heat. 

V 

NORTH INDIA 

An arid waste, rent by the creak 
Of wells that toiling oxen drain. 

Where not the gods themselves can wreak 
More poverty or draw more pain. 

Where cities to the jackal wide. 
And cities Caste is ruling still, 

Seem equally by Fate allied 
To Superstition's sterile will. 



FAR QUESTS 75 

VI 

THE KEIAMSIN, AT CAIRO 

A tawny terror in the light 
That beats against each minaret. 

Sands that entombed Osiris fight 
With Allah, and shall vanquish yet. 

The Sphinx awaits it; and the wind, 

Born of the desert, sends a cry 
Across her lips, lest she rescind 

Her smile — that says all gods shall die. 

vn 

THE JORDAN — AND JERICHO 

A muddy Serpent sliding thro the sand 

To the Dead Sea its hole; 
A Dirt-heap where the German's scholar-hand 

Sifts from the past some dole. 



76 FAR QUESTS 

A heat-sere hospice set between them, bare 

But for a garden-side, 
Where God still walks, upon the scented air, 
At eventide. 



A REQUIEM FOR A MAGDALEN 

(Venice) 

In a grave beneath the cypress tree, 
Brushed by the wing of the sea-gull lay her, 
Sin can now no more betray her, 

Death has shrived and set her free. 

In a grave beneath the cypress tree, 
Where the lone tides can ever say her 
Vespers low and orisons 

Until Eternity. 



77 



SNOWDONIAN HILLS 

O wild hills of Wales, 
Hills of whirling rain, 
Hills of flying mist and haunted moor, 
You tell your tales 
Of Arthur and his train 
To every rivered coombe your crags immure. 

Grey Merlin moods 
And meanings o'er you sweep, 

Enchantments of your spirit sad or glad. 
And far-famed feuds, 
A thousand years asleep. 
Wake in the wind that moans about you mad. 
78 



FAR QUESTS 79 

In cloud-swept mail 

Old Snowdon, who's your king, 
The lightning, his Excalibur, whirls white. 
And that great grail, 
The sun, a mystic thing, 
Breaks sudden forth — to vanish into night. 

From Caerleon's shrine 
To Mona in the sea, 

From the Great Orme to Milford of renown. 
You lift your line: 
No other hills there be 
To win from you in Britain's list the crown. 

But more, oh, more 
Than old Romance you tell, 
Than Druid legend hushed in Knighthood's lay. 
Your wild vales pour 
From Nature's deeper well 
The poetry to heal all hearts that pray. 



8o FAR QUESTS 

Yea, health-born joy 
You give to all that come, 
And chivalry for this — to charge the host 
Of ills that cloy 
And bodings that benumb 
The soul of man, earth cherishes the most! 



GULLS AT LAND'S END 

Hungry gulls, hungry gulls, hunters of the foam, 
Leave not the shore for the ship that sets to sea! 

Harsh the night is falling and the hoarse waves 
roam, 
Rest you in the cloven cliff's lee! 

Hungry gulls, hungry gulls, toilers o'er the tide. 
Trust to the bay and the beacon's reach for food ! 

They who seek the farthest are not best supplied, 
For the sea is strange — strange of mood. 

Hungry gulls, hungry gulls, nearer to your nest! 

Be you content with the ancient offing-fare! 

Never in the needless shall the heart find rest, 

Greed has ever brought the bosom care. 

8i 



TO SHELLEY 
(Jn Italy) 



Shelley, the winds of your song are blowing 

Over the fields of my heart to-day, 
Where the wild flowers of Grief are growing 

Up from the deep World-Soul astray; 
The winds you gathered from earth to Uranus, 

From atom to far Arcturus' light. 
From visible vastitudes that pain us. 

And vasts invisible to sight. 

n 

The winds that ever, with incantation, 

Evoke you verily for my eyes, 

82 



FAR QUESTS 83 

Your swift sad form of divine elation 

Under lone Lerici's blue skies. 
Your spirit that, like a new Antasus, 

Touched earth for strength, but to find it pain; 
That like a pale pitying corypheus 

Saw tyrant Fate tear Life in twain. 

Ill 

And all the longings that led Alastor, 

All the long sorrows that Laon bore, 
The almighty tortures that could not master 

Prometheus whom Jove's vulture tore, 
Around you rise as a mist immortal. 

The mast of a mind no fear e'er reined, 
Whose steed-like thoughts to the very portal 

Of Being's boundless abysses gained. 

IV 

Till, lo, the sea, that is ever avid, 
That swept you to death tempestuous, 



84 FAR QUESTS 

Seems now to remember, and with gravid 
Billowing grieve, as I stand here thus, 

Feeling your song's wild spirit essence 
About me still in the earth and sky, 

As a spaceless and elemental presence 
That, till the world does, cannot die! 



THE APOSTATE 

Julian the Emperor enthroned 

Apostate o'er the East, 
Swore every Christian of his realm 

Should die — man, child, or priest. 

Arming was he for Parthia: 
Returned, it should be done. 

Libanus, his rhetorician cried, 

"Where now's the Carpenter's son?*' 

"Making a coffin," bold replied 
A voice in the throng astir, 

"Making a coffin, for your lord 
Of boasts, the Emperor!" 



86 FAR QUESTS 

Julian heard, and Julian went ... 

And Julian came not back. 
What shall we say? Christ won the day? 
Or — does the moral lack? 



SPES MYSTICA 

I heard a voice from out the Future crying, 

Afar: 
"Fear not, fear not, ye children of the earth! 
There is in your desire a dream undying — 

The Star 
It steals from ever shines: wage still your war. 

For Time shall clear at last his whither and whence 

And when! 
And all that is dark shall vanish from your Dream. 
And all that is wide shall narrow to your ken, 

And then 
All that is strong, too strong no more shall seem. 

87 



88 FAR QUESTS 

For the great Mystery is only Mist — 

Not Night! 
And the great space, a spaceless Spell at last. 
And the great Power is but your being's Right 

And Goal: 
You shall attain triumphant to its Whole. 

Then will your love be lit with a new flame, 

Not shame. 
Then will your trust spring only up from Truth. 
Then will your courage free of Fear be born, 

Some Morn! 
Then will age be indeed the aim of youth! 



MOODS OF THE MOOR 



Heather moor! heather moor! 
The wind is full of joy to-day, 
He shouts with all his might to say 
The sun is sweet upon you. 
He smngs the clouds, he sweeps the hills, 
He shakes the wood with shadow-thrills, 
He dances thro the mountain hay 
Till routed scents o'errun you I 

n 

Heather moor! heather moor! 
The wind has gone, the sun has gone, 
The rain a Druid veil has drawn 
Across the coombe and river. 
89 



90 FAR QUESTS 

He calls the mists that hover white 
And in their henge performs a rite 
To heathen Nature gazing on 
The shapes she makes to shiver. 

Ill 

Heather moor! heather moor! 
The night has come, and dread has come, 
And Loneliness stalks o'er you, dumb 
And blind — a thing primeval. 
And Terror's disembodied tread 
Comes trembling with it from the dead. 
O heather moor, again become 
Less like a tomb of Evil. 



< ■^^..tt.iH.i. 



SEA LURE 

{The Maine Coast) 

It is so, O sea! wild roses 

Bloom here in the scent of thy brine. 
And the juniper round them closes, 

And the bays amid them twine, 
To guard and to praise their beauty; 

And the gulls above them cry. 
And the stem rocks stand on duty. 

Where the surf beats white and high. 

It is so, O sea! wild roses. 

With the day-long fog bedrenched, 
Have come from their inland closes 

With a thirst for thee unquenched. 
91 



92 FAR QUESTS 

And over thy cliffs they clamber, 
And over thy vast they gaze; 

For the tides of thee can enamour 
Even them with their woodland ways. 

Yea, the passion of thee and the power 
And the largeness are a lure 

To even the heart of a flower, 
O sea, with a heart unsure! 

For love is a thing unsated, 
Nor ever in any breast 

Has it dwelt, all want abated, 
At rest. 



BIDDEFORD BAY 

{Saco Bay) 

Eiddeford Bay is gold to-night, 

With the sun going down. 
The gulls have fled to their island home, 

Past Eiddeford Port and Town. 
All day they have clamored and swung and cried 
Like restless spirits born of the tide, 
That now comes restful in, and wide, 

Over rocks so wont to drown. 

Eiddeford Bay is gold to-night, 

With the sun setting low. 
The gulls have fled but the pines send yet 

A proudly solemn crow. 

93 



94 FAR QUESTS 

A warden is he who has waited long 
The last lone cry of the sea-born throng 
Ere homeward, too, over marshes strong 
With the tide, he straggles slow. 

Biddeford Bay is gold to-night, 

Till the coast-light flashes red; 
Then ashen and gray is Biddeford Bay, 

For the sun's last dream is dead. 
Yet star over star in the evening sky 
Comes telling that day but not love may die, 
Nor beauty nor hope that the soul may fly 
To its rest when life is sped. 



THE FISHING OF 0-SUSHI 

0-Sushi-San in the moonlight fishes, 

On the Inland Sea. 
He poles his boat where the soft weed swishes 
Under its bow and the ebb-tide wishes, 
Wishes with low lone lips again 
In the Great Deep to be. 

He poles his boat and desire comes to him 

Like the tide to go. 
The moonlight wistfully sad steals thro him. 
Waking ancestral years that woo him, 
Woo him back to the Timeless Deep 
From whence he sprung to woe. 
95 



96 FAR QUESTS 

But on he fishes — the moon e'er waning — 

Past the templed gate 
Of his near isle, whose shadow staining 
All the still sea around seems straining, 
Straining as is his soul to slip 
From its imceasing fate. 

And tide and shadow and soul together 

Seem at last to blend 
Within his trance, till he knows not whether 
Time has not slipped at last its tether, 
Tether of loneliness and pain — 
And lives without an end. 



A WOMAN'S REPLY 

If he dies whom I love, let me be — 

Tell me not to believe. 
If he leaves me, I only shall see 

I am human, and grieve. 

In the grave do not bid me behold 

But a God-open door; 
For to Love it is earth, it is mould — 

Is the grave and no more! 

Let me be for a little and then 
It may chance that the sod 

Shall become to my vision again 
As the garment of God. 
97 



WATERS WITHHELD 

I hear it again — 

The falling leaf; 
The wind that has ailed 

Overlong with grief; 
The river run dry, 

Like a heart I know; 
But I do not sigh, 

I arise — and go — 

And to death I say. 
And Decay, ''Not yet!" 

To the Wind, ''I sway. 
But my soul is set." 

To the Waters, ''Cease, 
But unstarven still 

I will wait, in peace, 

Till your floods refill." 
98 



FOG 

Wan ship-deceiving ghost of the gray sea, 
Huge wraith, walking the waters without sound, 
And casting e'er thy peril shroud around 

Our barque, as if to bring her destiny. 

Shade, whom the mariner dreads more to meet 
Than tempest razing sun and moon and star, 
Than winds that sweep away rudder and spar. 
And leave him to the wave's relentless war: 

Shade, phantom, ghost, be laid ever to sleep 

Within the grave of the engulphing Deep! 

For we who sail the sea can face its foam, 
O spectre of impalpable intent. 
But not a shrouded way should we be sent 

With thee to haunt us when afar from home. 

99 



loo FAR QUESTS 

Pain, struggle and desire and loneliness, 
Days in the wind and calm, we can endure, 
But we would be at least a little sure 
We are not lunging toward an unseen Lure. 
So, wraith — of Ignorance the avatar — 
Be laid, then we indeed shall venture far. 



THE LOST BEDOUIN 

Slowly across the sea of the desert 

Does he strain, 
To reach the palmy oasis waving 

Thro his pain. 
Is it again mirage that lures him? 

Will it fade? 
And leave once more but the sand, and craving 

For the green shade? 

^'Allah-hu-akbarl" — God is greatest — 

Seems to blow 
To him from minarets that tremble: 

Will they go? 
"AUah-hu-akbar!" does he answer, 

Falling prone. 
By palms that in truth at last resemble 

Heaven's own. 

lOI 



THE SONG OF A NEOPHYTE 

{Alexandria, A. D. 500) 

The body of Christ, where is it now? 

(Winds of the world, tell me!) 
They took it down from the black Hill's brow, 
Gave it a tomb, as all allow, 
It rose, as the twelve, and more, avow. 

(Kyxie eleison!) 

For forty days, and then to the skies — 

(Winds of the world, hear ye?) 

'Tis said that it swept, before men's eyes. 

Up to a bUss called Paradise. 

But of the gods there are many lies. 

(Kyrie eleison!) 

102 



FAR QUESTS 103 

Up to the stars they saw it wend. 

(Winds of the world, did they?) 
Never, I fear, but without end 
'Tis blown with all other dust to blend. 
Let me not tread on it, his friend! 

(Kyrie eleison!) 



SAPPHO'S DEATH SONG 

{On her clijf in Leucady) 

What have I gathered the years did not take 
from me? 
(Swallows, hear, as you fly from the cold!) 
Whom have I bound to me never to break from 
me? 
(Whom, O wind of the wold!) 
Whom, O wind! O hunter of spirits! 

(Pierce his spirit whose spear is in mine!) 
Then let Oblivion loose this ache from me, 
Proserpine! 

Lyre and the laurel the Muses gave to me, 

(Why comes summer when winter is nigh!) 

104 



FAR QUESTS 105 

Spent am I now and pain- voices rave to me. 

(O the sea and its cry!) 
O the sea that has suffered all sorrow! 

(Sea of the Delphian tongue ever shrill!) 
Nought from the wreck of love can now save to me 
Any thrill! 

Life that we live passes pale or amorous. 

(Tread, O vintagers, grapes in the press!) 
Mine's but a prey to Erinnyes clamorous. 

(0 for wine that will bless!) 
Wine that foams, but is free of all madness 

(Free, O Cypris, of fury's breath!) 
Free as I now shall be, O glamorous 
Queen of Death! 



THE MASTER 

The hounds of the sea are baying 

On the trail, o'er the new moon's tide. 
Their lips are afoam and swaying, 

And the winds behind them ride. 
The quarry is up before them, 

A ship with her brood of men, 
And a frenzy rushes o'er them, 

They bite her again and again. 

The winter has left them riven. 

And the winds have sped them hard, 

But away from her bows they are driven. 
She scatters them undebarred. 

For her beams are not wrought of cedar 

That crushed in their teeth of yore, 
io6 



FAR QUESTS 107 

But of steel; and strong fires feed her 
And drive her in to the shore. 

Yea, man is becoming master 

O sea; and in vain thy pack 
Shall hunt one day for disaster 

And ruin, upon his track: 
The master of thee and thy hunters — 

For the sky too does he dare — 
Supreme o'er all he encounters 

In the earth, the sea, and the air. 



CIVIL WAR 

I loaded my weapon, 

Aimed it well; 
I shot and a foe 

Before me fell. 

I passed the place 

When the fight was done, 
And there lay dead — 

My mother's son! 

I buried him deep, 

But deeper far 

Was buried in me 

Belief in war. 
zo8 



FAR QUESTS 109 

Yet, such is blood! 

I still fought fast, 
Till victory came 

To my cause at last. 

But now that honours 

Upon me throng, 
I know he was right — 

And I was wrong! 



MESSAGES 

We have sped them over the land, 

inimitably along. 
We have breathed them under the sea, 

By our cables dark and strong. 
We have hurled them into the air, 

From shore unto farthest shore, 
And soon we shall find, from mind to mind, 

A way to wing them o'er! 

We have loosed them out of the plains, 

To tell of the cyclone's path; 
We have spurred them carrying peace 

Thro the tempest's warring wrath. 
From ship unto sinking ship 

They have fied, and succor has come; 



no 



FAR QUESTS in 

So hail to the goal when heart and soul 
No more are distance-dumb! 

For then shall a thousand miles 

Indeed be shorn of its strength, 
And God not seem denied 

By the breadth of space and the length. 
For if our spirits may fling 

Their power and thought afar, 
His Soul, it must be, may spring, space-free, 

From star unto utmost star. 



WHAT PART 

In the great drama of the universe 
What part plays this our world? — 

Of dark impassioned Guilt, to Love a curse? 
Of broken-hearted Fool, beliefless whirled? 

Is it some Hamlet melancholy cast 
Between the planet powers of right and wrong? 

Some proud pale Prospero who shall at last 
Regain his empire with an Ariel's song? 

Or is it but a humble Vassal borne 

Upon the infinite Stage 
To battle all unhonoured when the horn 

Sounds the last tourney Life and Death shall 
wage? 

112 



THE UNKNOWN SHORE 

Storm on an unknown shore, 
A light that warns in vain. 

Nearer we drive and nearer roar 
The reefs: what port's to gain? 

Dire is the dark, then, lo, 
Swept on across the foam 

We lift our eyes at dawn, to know 
The port we've made — is home. 



X13 



MAN 

I woke in the night, silent, troubled, 
Pained with a sense of near appal. 

A shot rang out in the darkness — doubled: 
Swift steps ceased in a groan, a fall. 

Voices, then, of the Law that serves us. 

(O what man must do to man!) 
Night again, and the Power that swerves us 

On thro Space: O by what plan! 



114 



HAUNTED SEAS 

A gleaming glassy ocean, 

Under a sky of gray; 
A tide that dreams of motion, 

Or moves, as the dead may; 
A bird that dips and wavers 

O'er the lone waters round, 
Then with a cry that quavers 

Is gone — a spectral sound. 

The brown sad sea-weed drifting 

Far from the land, and lost. 
The faint warm fog unlifting, 

The derelict long-tossed. 
But now at rest — tho haunted 

By the death-scenting shark. 
Whose prey no more undaunted 

Slips from it, spent and stark. 
IIS 



CONVICTS 

{In a mine disaster) 

Down a black hole in the earth they toil 

Men like you and me; 
Prisoners sullen and fierce with soil — 

Serfs, to keep us free. 
Down a black hole they dig: for what? 
Sun stored there in an aeon forgot. 
Sudden a flash — and they are not. 

Now what grief shall be? 

Out they are drawn to the living light — 

Grimy, cold and dead. 

Out of their hell to the heaven's white, 

Head by numbered head. 
ii6 



FAR QUESTS 117 

Fathers of them, and friends, and wives! 
Mothers that bore them — a hundred lives I — 
Hither and weep — for the time arrives! . . • 
Not a tear is shed! 

Never a tear, they are convicts, these, 

Strangled in their stripes. 
Never a tear for their destinies 

From an eye love wipes. 
Never a sob — do you hear, O God? — 
As they are tumbled under the sod! 
Prisoners are they now of the clod — 

That forever gripes! 



WHO RESTS NOT 

Peace, hot heart, 

Lie in your nest! 

Life's wing breaks if it fails of rest. 

Work is good, 

And achievement better — 

But they too may the soul enfetter. 

And free, free it should ever be, 

Free tho its aim be skies immortal. 

Peace then, heart, 

And be done with doing: 

Who rests not but arrives at rueing. 



ii8 



THE UNHONOURED 

{In Westminster Abbey) 

Mothering fane of the great English dead 
Who lie immortal in thy transept tomb, 
Where falls upon their fame the gloried gloom 

Of windows that rain radiance overhead, 

I would there were no missing presences 

To grieve me in thy mighty organ's peal — 
No poets exiled by the tyrant heel 

Of cursed Custom's blind obduracies. 

For all too great for littleness thou art, 

And they who shut from thee a rightful s<m 

Shut also out a portion of God's heart, 
A portion of that Spirit which is one 

With aspiration, and the world's intent 

To prize all beauty as divinely sent. 

119 



AT LINCOLN, ENGLAND 

The swallow and the rook swing 
About the old cathedral tower: 

Softly falls the twilight, 

Softly float the clouds. 
The chimes above the roof peal 
The travail of the passing hour, 
Peal, and then are hushed in silence-shrouds. 

The glimmerings of pane-lights 
Are coming fast about the close. 

Fast about the cloister. 

Fast about the nave. 

The hearth-lights, the home-lights. 

That tell of ancient joys and woes 

Linked between the cradle and the grave. 

J 20 



FAR QUESTS 121 

The swallow and the rook cease, 
And swift into the tower throng. 
Starrily the skies stray, 
Starry overhead. 
A hush upon their peace hangs, 
A memory of even-song, 
Sung above the long-enhallowed dead. 



THE SONG OF A DRUNKEN PIRATE 

Dead men's voices sound in the sea, 
Dead ships shudder down in the deeps, 

Dead souls back from eternity 

Seek dead bodies the ooze o'ercreeps. 

Mate and skipper and bo'sun there, 
Bones are, all, in the shifting sands, 

But they rise at the sound and stare 
Thro dead sockets, in stutt'ring bands. 

Dead men, get ye away, away! 

Pass Hell's bottle, my mates; a dram! 
Set all sail till the Judgment Day, 

Then go down with a damn! Hoh! 

Down, to Doom, with a damn! 

122 



BUOYS 

A buoy on the billows 
A dipping gull, -» 
A wind that is glad, 
A sail that is taut. 
A sky that is blue 
And a sea blue-clad — 
With a tide song-fraught! 

A tide that shall bring me 
Upon its flow 
The breath of all life. 
Its sweetest boon — 
The power to hear 
Above world-deep strife 
God's growing Tune. 

123 



TO A BOASTING BLUET 

What, little bluet, you are the Spring? 
You know more of her mood than I, 
Who have Autumn and Winter too 
Shut in my heart, not April dew? 
What, little wilding dancing elf! 

Mock me, will you? as here I try 
In vain to fathom how she will bring 
One leaf to bud and to blossoming? 

What, little Merlin, born of the dew! 

She has told you the happy whole? 

But to me not a wizard word — 

More in truth to the merest bird? 

What, little mage in a wide green world, 

Mite of an hour, without a soul! 

You know all of her dreams? O true! 

And I do not even the least know you! 
124 



VOICES AT THE VEIL 

I rent the veil that hangs between 

The living and the dead, 
And cried aloud, ''Why have ye left 

Us here uncomforted! 

''Why do ye never speak nor come 

Again to ease our hearts? 
It were a little thing for love 

To do, when it departs!" 

Then thro the veil a voice blew back, 

"Come? we forever come! 
Scarce have we crossed the Silence ere 

We hear again time's hum 

125 



126 FAR QUESTS 

''And turn again to enter it; 

But ye are blind nor see 
That children come from where we are: 

Lo, I your child shall be." 

The veil fell back. And then the child 
Came and I searched its face, 

To find — the Mystery again; 
Of Death no other trace. 



TO SEA! 

Give me the tiller! up with the sail! 

Now let her swing to the breeze. 
Out to sea with a dripping rail, 

To sea, with a heart at ease! 

Out of the Harbour! out of the Bay! 

Out by the valiant Light, 
Out by rocks where the wild gulls lay - 

And wild winds teach them flight! 

Out of the Harbour! out of the Bay! 

Out to the open sea! 

O there's not in the world a way 

To feel so wildly free! 
127 



128 FAR QUESTS 

For the blue heaven boundless bends, 
And the blue sea 's as wide, 

And my heart with their limit blends, 
No longing left outside. 

So, let her quiver! So, let her leap! 

So, let her dance the foam! 
All life else is a narrow keep, 

The sea alone is homel 



ON IROQUOIS HILL 

{ToA.H.R.) 

The rustling dreams 
Of the leaves in sleep 

As the wakeful wind goes by 
Are like the thoughts 
That stir in me 

As you sit by me and sigh. 
With your hand in mine, 
And your heart in mine, 

And the summer moon in heaven, 
And the whip-poor-will 
Who is fain to fill 

The wood with lyric leaven. 
129 



A30 FAR QUESTS 

With your hand in mine! 
And your heart in mine! 
And the homeless sea of Night, 
In which we two 
Feel time pass thro 
With universal flight. 
And follow him 
To the hither rim 
Of uncreated space; 
Where the wind is still, 
As is God's will, 
In which our love finds place. 



SUFFICINGS 

(To A, E. R.) 

Day for the mind, 
But night for the soul. 
Sun for delight, 
But moon to console. 
Song for the glad, 
But silence for rest. 
God for the world — 
But you for my breast! 



1.^,1 



RECOMPENSE 

iXoA.H.R.) 

Not if 1 chose from a world of days 

Could I find a day like this. 
The sky is a wreath of azure haze 

And the sea an azure bliss. 
The surf runs racing the young salt wind, 

Shouting without a fear 
O'er reef and bar, o'er cliff and scaur, 

Where you and I lie near. 

O you and I who have watched the sky 

And sea from many a shore! 

You, love, and I who will live and die — 

And watch the sea no more! 
132 



FAR QUESTS 133 

O joy of the world! Joy of love, 

Joy that can say to death, 
" Tho you end all with your wanton pall, 

We two have had this breath! " 



VANISHINGS 

What went from me, 
As the bird I watched 

Vanisht in yonder cloud? 
Its flight was fair and swift and free, 

On the wind that blew aloud. 

What went from me? 
For my heart hangs now 

Heavier than the sky. 
In it gray clouds, as of destiny, 

Seem driving by and by. 

What went from me? 
O life! O time! 

O vanishings! O pain! 
O death! O breath of eternity, 

That cannot bring them agaia! 
134 



GALILEO 

(Dying, to his friends — after many penalties under 
the Inquisition for his astronomical beliefs) 
So be it . . the priest . . let him come, 
Since you fear . . with the Eucharist! 
I recant again: I will eat 
Of the Bread and drink of the Wine. 
But then give me peace thro the some 
Few hours that are left, for the Mist 
Drawls near me, and I w^ould complete 
One thought more. Do the stars shine? 

A heretic? no, let the Church 
Have her will . . . But Copernicus 
Saw a great truth for all that . . . 
And yet I am troubled still! 

135 



136 FAR QUESTS 

The sun — he found, in his search — 
Is the centre of all — aye thus 

Did he say, tho he paused thereat: 

There's more to be said by who will! 

There's more to be said by who dares 
But nay, do not fear, I am old 
And blind — so others must speak, 
And will — o'er the Church's ban. 
The heavens I found are theirs; 
The earth and the planets have told 
But a word: there will come who seek 
How the heavens themselves began! 

A blasphemy, that? Not so. 
For motion and force are God's, 
And in them is hidden the thought 
That eludes me, even to death. 
How earth draws the moon I know, 
And how great Jupiter plods. 



FAR QUESTS 137 

With his satellites to him caught — 
As if by an indrawn breath! 

That indrawn breath, is it one 

Between all things cast upon space? 

The stone that I fling and the star 

Fall yielding alike to its will? 

Does the Universe so run? 

God give me a year of grace 

And yet I shall pierce afar 

Into that ... for it needs but skill. 

The holy Wine and the Bread? 

They are come? . . . yea, I believe — 

In Christ and the Virgin too, 

So now ... be ever at ease. 

In the Church at Pisa o'erhead 

Swung the pendulous light . . . receive 

My discoveries, God, thou who 

Gave the first to me there on my knees! 



138 FAR QUESTS 

For if Thou hast sent thy Word 
To the Church Thou hast sent us too 
The heavens and all their scroll 
For men with their minds to read. 
So where the truth I averred 
Of the stars to thy Word's untrue. 
Lay it not, O God, to my soul 
That I trusted both in my need! 



AT THE END 

When it is done, 

The laughter and weepings 

When the heart hushes, 

When the brain stills; 
When I lie down 
For Silence and Sleeping, 

let it be, at last, on the hills! 

On the high hills 
Where gladly to wander 

Is my delight. 

As the wind knows; 
Where without tomb 
For any to ponder 

1 may, still facing the stars, repose. 

THE END 



THE IMMORTAL LURE 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

It is great art — with great vitality. 

James Lane Allen. 

In the midst of the Spring rush there arrives one 
book for which all else is pushed aside . . . We 
have been educated to the belief that a man must be 
long dead before he can be enrolled with the great 
ones. Let us forget this cruel teaching . . . This 
volume contains four poetic dramas all different in 
setting, and all so beautiful that we cannot choose 
one more perfect than another. . . . Too extra- 
vagant praise cannot be given Mr. Rice. 

The San Francisco Call. 

Four brief dramas, different from Paola & Francesca, 
but excelling it — or any other of Mr. Phillips's work, it 
is safe to say — in a vivid presentment of a supreme 
moment in the lives of the characters . . . They 
form excellent examples of the range of Mr. Rice's 
genius in this field. The New York Times Review^ 

Mr. Rice is quite the most ambitious, and most 
distinguished of contemporary poetic dramatists in 
America. The Boston Transcript {W. S. Braithwaite.) 

The vigor and originality of Mr. Rice's work never 
outweigh that first qualification, beauty . . . No 
American writer has so enriched the body of our poetic 
literature in the past few years. 

The New Orleans Picayune. 

Mr. Rice is beyond doubt the most distinguished 
poetic dramatist America has yet produced. 

The Detroit Free Press. 

That in Cale Young Rice a new American poet 
of great power and originality has arisen cannot be 
denied. He has somehow discovered the secret 
of the mystery, wonder and spirituahty of human 



J 



existence, which has been all but lost in our commer- 
cial civilization. May he succeed in awakening our 
people from sordid dreams of gain. 

Rochester {N. Y. ) Post Express. 

No writer in England or America holds himself to 
higher ideals (than Mr. Rice) and everything he does 
bears the imprint of exquisite taste and the finest 
poetic instinct. The Portland Oregonian. 

In simplicity of art form and sheer mystery of 
romanticism these poetic dramas embody the new 
century artistry that is remaking current imaginative 
literature. The Philadelphia North American. 

Cale Young Rice is justly regarded as the leading 
master of the difi&cult form of poetic drama. 

Portland {Me.) Press. 

Mr. Rice has outlived the prophesy that he would 
one day rival Stephen Phillips in the poetic drama. 
As dexterous in the mechanism of his art, the young 
American is the Englishman's superior in that unforced 
quality which bespeaks true inspiration, and in a wider 
variety of manner and theme. 

San Francisco Chronicle. 

Mr. Rice's work has often been compared to Stephen 
Phillips's and there is great resemblance in their ex- 
pression of high vision. Mr. Rice's technique is sure 
. . . his knowledge of his settings impeccable, and 
one feels sincerely the passion, power and sensuous 
beauty of the whole. "Arduin"(one of the plays) 
is perfect tragedy; as rounded as a sphere, as terrible 
as death. Review of Reviews. 

The Immortal Lure is a very beautiful work. 

The Springfield (Mass.) Republican. 

The action in Mr. Rice's dramas is invariably 
compact and powerful, his writing remarkable forcible 
and clear, with a rare grasp of form. The plays are 
brief and classic. Baltimore News. 



These four dramas, each a separate unit perfect 
in itself and differing widely in treatment, are yet 
vitally related by reason of the one central theme, 
wrought out with rich imagery and with compelling 
dramatic power. The Louisville Times (U. S.) 

The literary and poetical merit of these dramas is 
undeniable, and they are charged with the emotional 
life and human interest that should, but do not, al- 
ways go along with those other high gifts. 

The (London) Bookman. 



C O U WTH T Lire [Wli TiBBV/bBlxriWOBK f®)t TheG AXDXB 

DOUBLED AY. PAGE & CO.. GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 



MANY GODS 

By 

CALE YOUNG RICE 



THESE poems are flashingly, glowingly 
full of the East. . . . What I 
am sure of in Mr. Rice is that here 
we have an American poet whom we may 
claim as ours." The North American Review 
{William Dean Howells). 

''Mr. Rice has the gift of leadership. . 
and he is a force with whom we must reckon." 
The Boston Transcript. 

. . . "We find here a poet who strives 
to reach the goal which marks the best that 
can be done in poetry." The Book News 
Monthly {A. S. Henry). 

"When ycu hear the pessimists bewailing 
the good old time when real poets were abroad 
in the land ... do not fail to quote 
them almost anything by Cale Young Rice, 
a real poet writing to-day. . . . He has 
done so much splendid work one can scarcely 
praise him too highly." The San Francisco 
Call. 

"'In ivlany Gods' the scenes are those of 
the East, and while it is not the East of 
Loti, Arnold or Hearn, it is still a place of 



brooding, majesty, mystery and subtle fasci- 
nation. There is a temptation to quote 
such verses for their melody, dignity of form, 
beauty of imagery and height of inspiration." 
The Chicago Journal, 

"* Love's Cynic' (a long poem in the vol- 
ume) might be by Browning at his best." 
Pittsburg Gazette-Times, 

"This is a serious, and from any standpoint, 
a successful piece of work . . . in it 
are poems that will become classic." Passaic 
(New Jersey) News. 

"Mr. Rice must be hailed as one among 
living masters of his art, one to whom we may 
look for yet greater things." Presbyterian 
Advance, 

"This book is in many respects a remark- 
able work. The poems are indeed poems." 
The Nashville Banner. 

"Mr. Rice's poetical plays reach a high 
level of achievement. . . . But these 
poems show a higher vision and surer mastery 
of expression than ever before." The London 
Bookman. 

Net, $1.25 {postage 12c.) 



NIRVANA DAYS 

Poems by 

CALE YOUNG RICE 



MR. RICE has the technical cunning 
that makes up almost the entire 
equipment of many poets nowadays, 
but human nature is more to him always 
. . . and he has the feeling and imagina- 
tive sympathy without which all poetry is 
but an empty and vain thing." The London 
Bookman. 

*'Mr. Rice^s note is a clarion call, and of his 
two poems, 'The Strong Man to His Sires' and 
'The Young to the Old,' the former will send 
a thrill to the heart of every man who has the 
instinct of race in his blood, while the latter 
should be printed above the desk of every 
minor poet and pessimist. . . . The son- 
nets of the sequence, 'Quest and Requital,' 
have the elements of great poetry in them." 
The Glasgow {Scotland) Herald. 

"Mr. Rice's poems are singularly free from 
affectation, and he seems to have written be- 
cause of the sincere need of expressing some- 
thing that had to take art form." The Sun 
{New York). 

"The ability to write verse that scans is 
quite common. . . . But the inspired 
thought behind the lines is a different 



thing; and it is this thought un trammeled 
— the clear vision searching into the deeps 
of human emotion — which gives the verse 
of Mr. Rice weight and potency. ... In 
the range of his metrical skill he easily stands 
with the best of living craftsmen . . . 
and we have in him ... a poet whose 
dramas and lyrics will endure." The Book 
News Monthly (A. S. Henry). 

"These poems are marked by a breadth 
of outlook, individuality and beauty of 
thought. The author reveals deep, sincere 
feeling on topics which do not readily lend 
themselves to artistic expression and which 
he makes eminently worth while." The 
Buffalo {N. Y.) Courier. 

'*We get throughout the idea of a vast 
universe and of the soul merging itself in the 
infinite. . . . The great poem of the 
volume, however, is 'The Strong Man to His 
Sires.'" The Louisville Post {Margaret S. 
Anderson), 

"The poems possess much music . . . 
and even in the height of intensified feeling 
the clearness of Mr. Rice's ideas is not dimmed 
by the obscure haze that too often goes with 
the divine fire." The Boston Globe. 

Paper hoards. Netj $1.2$ {postage 12c,) 



I 



A NIGHT IN AVIGNON 

By 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

Successfully produced by Donald Robertson 

T IS as vivid as a page from Browning. 
Mr. Rice has the dramatic pulse." 
James Uuneker. 

"It embraces in small compass all the 
essentials of the drama. New York Saturday 
Times Review {Jessie B. Rittenhouse) . 

"It presents one of the most striking 
situations in dramatic literature and its 
climax could not be improved." The San 
Francisco Call. 

"It has undeniable power, and is a very 
decided poetic achievement." The Boston 
Transcript. 

"It leaves an enduring impression of a 
soul tragedy." The Churchman. 

"Since the publication of his 'Charles di 
Tocca' and other dramas, Cale Young Rice 
has justly been regarded as a leading Ameri- 
can master of that difficult form, and many 
critics have ranked him above Stephen 
Phillips, at least on the dramatic side of his 
art. And this judgment is further confirmed 
by 'A Night in Avignon.' It is almost in- 
credible that in less than 500 lines Mr. Rice 
should have been able to create so perfect a 



play with so powerful a dramatic effect." The 
Chicago Record-Herald {Edwin S. Shuman) 

"There is poetic richness in this brilliant 
composition; a beauty of sentiment and 
grace in every line. It is impressive, metri- 
cally pleasing and dramatically powerful." 
The Philadelphia Record. 

"It offers one of the most striking situa- 
tions in dramatic literature." The Louisville 
Courier- Journal. 

"The publication of a poetic drama of the 
quality of Mr. Rice's is an important event 
in the present tendency of American litera- 
ture. He is a leader in this most significant 
movement, and 'A Night in Avignon' is 
marked, like his other plays, by dramatic 
directness, high poetic fervor, clarity of 
poetic diction, and felicity of phrasing." 
The Chicago Journal. 

"It is a dramatically told episode, and the 
metre is most effectively handled, making 
a welcome change for blank verse, and greatly 
enhancing the interest." Sydney Lee. 

"Many critics, on hearing Mr. Bryce's 
prediction that America will one day have a 
poet, would be tempted to remind him of 
Mr. Rice," The Hartford {Conn.) Courant. 
Net 50c. {postage 5c.) 



SONG-SURF 

(Being the Lyrics of Plays and Lyrics) by 

CALE YOUNG PRICE 

MR. RICE'S work betrays wide sym- 
pathies with nature and life, and a 
welcome originality of sentiment and 
metrical harmony." Sydney Lee, 

"In his lyrics Mr. Rice's imagination works 
most successfully. He is an optimist — and 
in these days an optimist is irresistible — 
and he can touch delicately things too holy 
for a rough or violent pathos." The London 
Star {James Douglas). 

"Mr. Rice's highest gift is essentially 
lyrical. His lyrics have a charm and grace 
of melody distinctively their own." The 
London Bookman. 

"Mr. Rice is keenly responsive to the 
loveliness of the outside world, and he re- 
veals this beauty in words that sing them- 
selves." The Boston Transcript. 

"Mr. Rice's work is everywhere marked 
by true imaginative power and elevation of 
feeling." The Scotsman. 

"Mr. Rice's work would seem to rank with 
the best of our American poets of to-day." 
The Atlanta Constitution. 



"Mr. Rice^s poems are touched with the 
magic of the muse. They have inspiration, 
grace and true lyric quality." The Book 
News Monthly. 

"Mr. Rice's poetry as a whole is both 
strongly and delicately spiritual. Many of 
these lyrics have the true romantic mystery 
and charm. ... To write thus is no 
indifferent matter. It indicates not only long 
work but long brooding on the beauty and 
mystery of life." The Louisville Post. 

" Mr. Rice is indisputably one of the greatest 
poets who have lived in America. . . . 
And some of these (earlier) poems are truly 
beautiful. The Times-Union {Albany ^ N. F.) 



Net, $1.25 {postage 12c.) 



CHARLES DI TOCCA 

By 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

1TAKE off my hat to Mr. Rice. His 
play is full of poetry, and the pitch and 
dignity of the whole are remarkable." 
James Lane Allen, 

"It is a dramatic poem one reads with a 
heightened sense of its fine quality through- 
out. It is sincere, strong, finished and noble, 
and sustains its distinction of manner to the 
end. . . . The character of Helena is 
not unworthy of any of the great masters of 
dramatic utterance. ' ' The Chicago Tribune. 

"The drama is one of the best of the kind 
ever written by an American author. Its 
whole tone is masterful, and it must be classed 
as one of the really literary works of the 
season." (1903). The Milwaukee Sentinel. 

"It shows a remarkable sense of dramatic 
construction as well as poetic power and 
strong characterization." James Mac Arthur, 
in Harper's Weekly. 

"This play has many elements of perfection. 
Its plot is developed with ease and with a large 
dramatic force; its characters are drawn with 
sympathy and decision; and its thoughts 



rise to a very real beauty. By reason of it 
the writer has gained an assured place among 
playwrights who seek to give literary as well 
as dramatic worth to their plays." The 
Richmond {Va.) News-Leader. 

"The action of the play is admirably com- 
pact and coherent, and it contains tragic 
situations which will afford pleasure not only 
to the student, but to the technical reader." 
The Nation. 

"It is the most powerful, vital, and truly 
tragical drama written by an American for 
some years. There is genuine pathos, mighty 
yet never repellent passion, great sincerity 
and penetration, and great elevation and 
beauty of language." The Chicago Post. 

"Mr. Rice ranks among Americans choicest 
poets on account of his power to turn music 
into words, his virility, and of the fact that he 
has something of his own to say." The Boston 
Globe. 

"The whole play breathes forth the inde- 
finable spirit of the Italian renaissance. In 
poetic style and dramatic treatment it is 
a work of art." The Baltimore Sun. 

Paper hoards. Net, $1.25 {postage, gc) 



DAVID 

A Poetic Drama by 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

I WAS greatly impressed with it and de- 
rived a sense of personal encouragement 
from the evidence of so fine and lofty 
a product for the stage." Richard Mansfield, 

"It is a powerful piece of dramatic por- 
traiture in which Cale Young Rice has again 
demonstrated his insight and power. What 
he did before in 'Charles di Tocca' he has 
repeated and improved upon. . . . Not 
a few instances of his strength might be 
cited as of almost Shakespearean force. 
Indeed the strictly literary merit of the tragedy 
is altogether extraordinary. It is a con- 
tribution to the drama full of charm and 
power." The Chicago Tribune, 

"From the standpoint of poetry, dignity 
of conception, spiritual elevation and finish 
and beauty of line, Mr. Rice's 'David' is, 
perhaps, superior to his 'Yolanda of C)T)rus,' 
but the two can scarcely be compared." 
The New York Times {Jessie B. Rittenhouse). 

"Never before has the theme received treat- 
ment in a manner so worthy of it." The 
St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 



"It needs but a word, for it has been passed 
upon and approved by critics all over the 
country." Book News Monthly. And again: 
"But few recent writers seem to have found 
the secret of dramatic blank verse; and of 
that small number, Mr. Rice is, if not first, 
at least without superior." 

"With instinctive dramatic and poetic 
power, Mr. Rice combines a knowledge of 
the exigencies of the stage." Harper^ s 
Weekly. 

"It is safe to say that were Mr. Rice an 
Englishman or a Frenchman, his reputation 
as his country's most distinquished poetic 
dramatist would have been assured by a 
more universal sign of recognition. The 
Baltimore News {writing of all Mr. Rice^s 
plays) . 



Net, $1.25 {postage 12c.) 



I 



YOLANDA OF CYPRUS 

A Poetic Drama by 

CALE YOUNG RICE 

T HAS real life and drama, not merely- 
beautiful words, and so differs from the 
great mass of poetic plays. 

Prof. Gilbert Murray. 

Minnie Maddern Fisk says: "No one can 
doubt that it is superior poetically and 
dramatically to Stephen Phillips's work," 
and that Mr. Rice ranks with Mr. Phillips 
at his best has often been reafi&rmed. 

"It is encouraging to the hope of a native 
drama to know that an American has written 
a play which is at the same time of decided 
poetic merit and of decided dramatic power. " 

The New York Times. 

"The most remarkable quality of the play 
is its sustained dramatic strength. Poetically 
it is frequently of great beauty. It is also 
lofty in conception, lucid and felicitous in 
style, and the dramatic pulse throbs in every 
line." The Chicago Record-Herald. 

"The characters are drawn with force and 
the play is dignified and powerful," and adds 
that if it does not succeed on the stage it 
will be "because of its excellence." 

The Springfield Republican. 



"Mr. Rice is one of the few present-day 
poets who have the steadiness and weight, for 
a well-sustained drama." 

The Louisville Post {Margaret Anderson). 

"It has equal command of imagination, 
dramatic utterance, picturesque effectiveness 
and metrical harmony. " 

The London {England) Bookman. 

T. P.^s Weekly says: "It might well stand 
the difficxilt test of production and will be 
welcomed by all who care for serious verse." 

The Glasgow {Scotland) Herald says: "Yo- 
landa of C3^rus is finely constructed; the 
irregular blank verse admirably adapted for 
the exigencies of intense emotion; the char- 
acters firmly drawn; and the climax serves 
the purpose of good stagecraft and poetic 
justice. " 

"It is well constructed and instinct with 
dramatic power." Sydney Lee. 

"It is as readable as a novel. " 

The Pittsburg Post. 

"Here and there an almost Shakespearean 
note is struck. In makeup, arrangement, 
and poetic intensity it ranks with Stephen 
Phillips's work. " The Book News Monthly. 
(Net, $1.25 (postage loc.) 

COTHTRrrmi fW\ IteW&HiiTji'W&HK /9t Tm OaancBi 

IMAMEBICA \£/ ^^^ MASAZDIK 

DOUBLEDAY. PAGE & CO.. GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 



MAR SO I9I2 



